6 Best WordPress Image Compression Plugins Compared & The Winner Is…

I remember a time when compressing images on this blog used to be free.

Thanks to the developer of the Smush.it plugin, we got very spoiled and became used to free image compression.

In the last few months, everything we knew about free image compression has changed. Now, most of the WordPress plugins which are available online offer a small quota of free compressions & then you have to pay.

So in this post, I thought it would be a good idea to look at all the existing image compression tools out there (free & paid).

Those who have a small or medium sized WordPress blog can use multiple WordPress plugins to optimize all of their existing/future uploads for free. It might be time-consuming, but I know that when you are starting out, money is more important than time.

For those who have a medium sized or a large blog, you may want to consider going for a paid option. This will help you load your blog faster & will keep your readers happy.

Here’s the formula:

Happy readers = Good blog = Better ranking = More money

That’s a good formula, but let’s get down to the real business. Here are some of the best image compression WordPress plugins.

(Like always, I will try to put as many important points as possible about these plugins to help you make an informed decision. Cool?)

Best Image Compression WordPress Plugins: Make Website Faster

ShortPixel is a developer specifically for WordPress. They offer both free & paid accounts (like all the others). Though, there is one really cool part about this service which I’ll tell you about in a minute.

Features:

Supports Lossy and Lossless Optimization.

Supports JPG, PNG, GIF & PDF.

Restore original image anytime.

Compress all old uploads with a single click.

Process new images automatically on upload.

No file size limit.

Your free quota & paid quota are treated separately.

This way, you always have 100 free image compressions.

Save and keep a backup of your original images in a separate folder.

Option to optimize all images (thumbnail images) or only the original image.

This is another popular solution which I’m sure many of you will like. Optimus seems to be a great alternative for the Smush.it plugin as this will let you compress all images <100Kb for free.

Features:

Support JPEG, PNG.

Bulk compression.

Free account:

Unlimited compression of images < 100Kb.

Supports Progressive JPEG.

Paid account:

$19 one time fees for unlimited image compression.

Maximum file size 5MB.

Supports WebP conversion.

For the price, Optimus HQ is worth every penny.

But I would really like to see improvements in their bulk compression feature. If you stop the bulk compression in between & start the process later, it will start compressing all images again. It would be better if it could skip those images which have already been processed.

Go to Media > Compress all images & start compressing all of your old images. You can also go to the media uploader & selectively compress individual images (which is a good idea to conserve your quota).

While researching for this post, I got to know more about their WordPress plugin & I signed up for a free account.

One cool thing about this plugin is it lists down all the images in your theme folder. You can select individual ones or you can select all & compress those images. Preeeetty cool, huh?

Features:

Supports JPG, PNG, GIF & PDF files.

All plans support multiple websites.

Supports sub-accounts & you can define a quota for it (good for agencies).

Supports restoration of original files (images + PDF) for one month.

Compress all previous images in WordPress with one click or compress images selectively.

Free account:

15-day trial.

100 MB quota.

Paid account (10,000 images):

$30 for 10K images.

Valid for 1 year.

Ease of use:

The plugin is pretty easy to use & in most cases, it auto-detects your API if you are logged into their online portal from the same browser.

Note: It directly leads to the media uploader for compression which might not be good for users. The first screen after activating the API should be the plugin settings.

Anyway, you can access it by going to Settings > ImageRecycle.

When I was testing this plugin, I realized my blog slowed down a lot. This could have been for multiple reasons, so it should not stop you from trying it. But since it happened with me, I believe it’s good to at least let you know.

Once you have setup the settings, go to Media > ImageRecycle to start compressing.

One thing which I really like about this plugin is you can sort images based on size, which is useful when you want to take care of really large images first.

Overall, their WordPress plugin is pretty solid & could be your next image optimization WordPress plugin.

(Since page speed is one of the factors for a better user-experience, and also a search engine ranking factor, we can expect similar plugins launching in the coming days. I will keep adding new WordPress image compression plugins as I discover them.)

Conclusion

I have compiled those services from above list that offer a free image compression quota every month. If you have a small or a starter blog, this should be enough to take care of your monthly need.